Shenanigans
by FFlove190
Summary: Sephiroth wasn't sure if Zack Fair was incredibly incompetent, or incredibly irresponsible. Either way, it was rubbing off on him.


A/N: Giftfic for Ekala written for the FF7 '16 Fanworks Exchange on ao3

Sephiroth didn't have to wonder what the smell was for long. It should have been surprising that he had to wonder at all. Zack Fair always had a certain scent about him: the smell of unwashed soldier fresh from the frontlines - or, in Zack's case, constant irresponsibility.

Without comment or fanfare, Zack walked into the office. Naked, for all intents and purposes (underwear didn't make good armor as far as Sephiroth was concerned), with a bag tucked under his arm. Fascinating that the Second appeared so freshly washed, yet that Zack-ish odor was stronger than Sephiroth could remember it being.

Abandoning his paperwork, Sephiroth settled in to watch the mystery of Zack's latest trouble unfold. Over the months, he'd come to enjoy the chaos that defined Zack. But, not too often of course; Zack's presence tended to leave him days behind his work if he wasn't careful.

"Heya, Sephiroth!" Zack dropped the bag; it _fwumped_ and release a palpable wave of stench that nearly sent Sephiroth reeling. Had Zack somehow managed to bottle his essence? Anything was possible. "You're not too busy now, are you?"

Sephiroth spared a glance for the bag - an ordinary equipment bag from the looks of it - before turning his attention back to Zack. So far it wasn't the strangest thing Zack had brought to his office begging for help (there had been the cactuar he attempted to plant as a replacement for one of Angeal's late cacti; there had also been that escaped experiment that had shot acid and had escaped through the air ducts; there were a few other things that Zack liked to pretend never happened) "Good afternoon, Zack. You appear underdressed today."

"So," Zack said with a grin. "You're pretty free then."

While that wasn't the case, Sephiroth didn't bother trying to correct him: Zack drew his own conclusions and stuck with them as stubbornly and fruitlessly as a zolom chasing a chocobo. Sephiroth just shrugged.

"Did you know that swamp mud just gets everywhere? Like, I mean everywhere. I think I took like five showers and I _still_ think there's zolom poop in my hair. Blech. Yucky. I don't even want to talk about my uniform." Zack, with that strange sense of his, must have realized Sephiroth wasn't following so he clarified: "I figured you wouldn't like having to deal with mud and doo-doo all over your office."

"Thank you for your concern." Sephiroth wasn't entirely sure what he was thanking Zack for, but whenever Zack had been convinced he did a favor Sephiroth made sure to thank him anyway. It only seemed appropriate. Zack sat in his customary chair, relaxing in the leather without regard to his mostly naked state. "I take it your mission went adequately."

Making a face, Zack waved a hand. "Nothing too weird. Swamps are swampy. Zoloms are giant poop snakes. Yanno. The usual."

Sephiroth accepted the summary with a nod. The formal debrief had already been scheduled with Angeal, and Sephiroth felt no need to pry when it came to matters of routine swamp patrols. Instead, he focused his curiosity back on the bag. "What did you bring?"

"Huh? Oh," Zack snapped out of a post-mission daze and leaned forward in his chair. Conspiratorily, as Zack liked to say. "So, I got this debrief later. One of those debrief 'n dinner 'n lecture sort of deals with Angeal. We do them all the time." Sephiroth was aware of it and nodded. "See… here's the thing. Angeal's such a stickler for conduct and all. Gotta look groomed and ready no matter what right? But, well, I gotta meet with him in four hours and well..." Zack made a sad sound waved a hand at his underclothed self.

Trying to puzzle out Zack's words was always a challenge. "So you will be debriefing with Angeal… in your underwear?"

Zack laughed. "No, no, no, no. That's exactly what I _don't_ want."

Sephiroth thought again, pondering Zack's words. It obviously amused Zack to see him struggle like this, but honestly Sephiroth just wanted to know what was in the bag. "So what do you want then?"

"To show up in uniform. Yanno, something nice and clean to go with my freshly showered self and ShinRa flavored hair. Be - be presentable, professional, and dosh garn decent-looking."

Sephiroth looked at Zack's pose, noted that he was falling out of his undergarments, and simply said. "You are clearly putting your best effort in self-improvement."

Zack stuck out his tongue before closing his legs. "Thanks for noticing. So, I get out of the shower - the seventh one -"

"I thought you only took five."

"Nah, it was definitely the seventh. Had to get all that swamp off before meeting up with Angeal, right? So, well, I get out and I'm looking around my room and I realize that I'm totally cleaned out. Ha. Cleaned out. That's a good one!" Zack had to control his laughter before continuing, his voice pitched with melodrama. "So I'm like freaking out right? I mean I can't show up wearing tighty-whities. I'd look like such a little kid! Angeal would never let me hear the end of it. I was convinced this was the end, but then I realized. I realized that you - great and benevolent Sephiroth - could help!"

Perhaps in some far, distant universe, Zack's words were sensible. But Sephiroth was not there, nowhere near it in fact; he was in his office - a place of methodological logic and reasoning. "What do you believe I can assist with?"

Zack smirked as he leaned even closer and the look in his eyes… Sephiroth was familiar with it by now; eagerness tensed his muscles as he waited.

And Zack offered in a low whisper, "Laundry."

"Oh." Of course. That explained the odor. Sephiroth glanced at the bag again; if the bag was all that Zack had brought with him, then what was he offering in return. In fact, Sephiroth was suddenly quite curious as to where Zack had been keeping his keycard (freshly washed skin or no).

"See, I heard a rumor that Firsts get like major super duper priority on laundry. Two hour turn-around time, tops." Zack scooted further, until he was only sitting in the chair conceptually - on the edge of his seat. "And seeing as how you, uh, just happen to be a First and are pretty free right now…"

"Hmm…"

Sephiroth wasn't wondering whether or not he would agree. He always had. From the first day Sephiroth had let Zack hide in his office while Genesis spluttered and raged he had doomed himself. It had lead to knowingly missing a meeting with President ShinRa to help Zack finish his homework, to Zack' bringing in a cracked materia that obliterated a week's worth of paperwork. Zack's presence should have been an inconvenience, but Sephiroth couldn't bring himself to be anything but happy by it. Zack was still incomprehensible most of the time, but he was still pleasant company.

Sephiroth couldn't figure out what hints Zack had dropped in that conversation to allude to a need for laundry - of all things. But none were obvious. "What can you offer in exchange?"

Perhaps Zack's offering would be an in-depth analysis of their conversation. It seemed a logical deduction - clearly Zack hadn't brought anything besides his unwashed clothes - but it was equally possible that it could be a stick of gum stored in a non-food safe environment. Sephiroth could never tell with Zack.

Zack just grinned. The transaction process was familiar to them both by now - expedient and to the point; after all, that was how Zack had taught Sephiroth to do it. Zack held up four fingers, "Four hours of paperwork."

"Hn." Sephiroth was struck - not for the first time - that Zack was a wellspring of bad ideas.

"Hold on, just think about it for a minute. Let me break it down. First, I can forge your signature real good. I mean, pfff, come on. I hang out in here so much and you just sign papers all day every day for days. It'd be crazy if I didn't learn how to do it by now. And thirdly, I can sign things at the _same time_ as you. The same time, Sephiroth. Do you know what that means?"

"No."

"You double your throughput!" Zack threw his arms up and nearly bounced out of the chair. "You got four hours of two times yourself. That's eight of you - it's like you just got quadrupled!"

"Octupled," Sephiroth corrected absently, trying to understand even fractionally how Zack thought math - and physics - functioned.

"Even better! You'll have eight arms worth of signing!" Zack put a hand on the desk as Sephiroth struggled to keep his mouth shut about the logic of that statement. "Think about it. Think about all the papers you won't have to sign if I sign them for you. I won't even have to read them. Just give me stuff you'd sign anyway."

It was, in a word, tempting. Paperwork, Sephiroth had come to learn, was the bane of his existence. It fettered him to this office, wasting his time when he would much rather be spending it any other way - training, sparring, terrorizing cadets, wiping Heidegger's ass. The list of possibilities was endless. Zack' newfound, sometimes presence was a welcome distraction. But it had never actually helped get work done. Far from it.

Zack bounced and fidgeted as he waited for Sephiroth's decision.

Well, Sephiroth pondered as he watched the movement. Zack _was_ a wellspring of bad ideas, but that was the very foundation of their relationship. If the Second hadn't set Genesis's hair on fire three months ago - the how or why of which Sephiroth still had yet to be told - they would still be strangers orbiting Angeal. That seemed wrong. Worse than wrong, actually, because Sephiroth refused to be deprived of the chaos that was Zack Fair. It would be too boring otherwise.

"Deal." Like always, he accepted. 'Caved,' was probably what Genesis would have called it.

"Sweet! You won't be disappointed, Sephiroth. I promise!"

They shook on it.

"So what's the plan?" Zack bounced around the desk as Sephiroth stood.

"You will be signing anything that Angeal has already approved." Sephiroth trusted his friend's judgment - he couldn't remember a time when he had disagreed with Angeal's assessments.

"Approved?"

"Signed. Anything he's already signed." Sephiroth clarified. "Go through this pile and pull everything that's been through his office."

Zack's salute would have been perfect form were he properly dressed. "Righto! Take out everything with Angeal's signature and make a big pile of it."

"Correct."

Zack settled down in Sephiroth's chair enthusiastically - with minimal spinning at that - and eagerly got to work. In response, Sephiroth took the bag of unwashed uniforms out to his secretary and arranged for the priority cleaning Zack had requested.

Sephiroth returned to the office to find Zack knee-deep in sorting. The piles were lopsided, but they weren't flying anywhere. "Your laundry should arrive before your debrief."

Zack paused rifling through the papers and looked up with a bright smile. "Sweet! So, like, two hours before, or oh-shit-right-on-the-dot?"

"It will be expedient," Sephiroth promised. "Now get out of my chair."

"What? We're not sharing?" Zack patted the arm rests, his voice sounding just like his pout. "There's plenty of room."

"There are other chairs."

"But I like yours."

Sephiroth fought a sigh. "So do I. The chair is mine - "

"We should share it. I mean, just think of how long we're going to sit here arguing about chairs. Wasting away four hours of perfectly good paperworking. I mean, go ahead if you want to. It's not like you're left-handed and I'm right-handed or anything. It's not like super amazingly efficient of an idea where we don't have to re-arrange your office."

This time Sephiroth did sigh. One day he would figure out how Zack made insanity sound so logical, and then he would figure out how to counter it. Until that day, he would just accept it. "Fine. Move over."

"Wow you're heavy. Gah, you're squishing me! Hold still a second…" Zack shimmied and shifted - until he was sitting on Sephiroth's lap. "There, that's better!"

Sephiroth didn't think so. "Your hair is going up my nose."

"And it smells like a new beginning at the end of a shampoo bottle, don't it?"

Sephiroth sighed and pushed Zack's head out of the way. The action earned him a giggle. Instead he focused on organizing the mess of his stack, skimming for more papers to add to Zack's already fairly sizeable pile and settling down for work. Zack was efficient beside him - barely saying anything when Sephiroth tossed him another paper - and the forged signature was so neat that Sephiroth hoped Zack never used his powers for evil.

Despite the position, Sephiroth didn't feel uncomfortable. A tad warmer than he'd like, but it was nice to have something alive so close. It wasn't like the still, rumbling presence of a cat, nor like the warm embrace of a lover, it was more like a bouncing dog too busy to sit still. It was nice. Sephiroth didn't know if he managed to keep the smile off his face after that.

Time passed, both of them fell into the routine of paperwork and the pile of papers in the outbox grew. Zack stopped to stretch with a grunt, one hand reaching past Sephiroth's head and tangling in silver hair. Sephiroth did his best not to laugh.

The door opened, startling Sephiroth from the entertainment. Then he stopped thinking, freezing altogether; Zack did, too, hand still half-raised awkwardly by Sephiroth's face. Angeal and Genesis were at the door, staring.

This was it. The moment his life fell apart - caught accepting bribes, submitting forged signatures… he shouldn't have caved to Zack so easily.

Genesis was the first to move. Looking at Angeal, and then back to the chairbound duo, he finally said, "I didn't know you were sharing your puppy, Angeal."

As if the comment had unleashed it, one of Angeal's neck veins bulged with coming rage. Zack cried out and tried to cover himself - pulling Sephiroth's head along with him. "Angeal! You - you weren't supposed to see me yet!"

Angeal's rage was redirect to confusion. "Excuse me?!" Despite the situation, Sephiroth was vindicatingly happy that even Angeal struggled to handle Zack's logic.

"Gah!" Zack vaulted out of the chair. Sephiroth yanked his head back before he could follow, thankful that his hair was just as eager to give Zack up to his fate with a snap. The Second rolled under the desk and peeked up between Sephiroth's legs with silver threads still caught on his arm. "Psst," Zack whispered up at him. "Get under the desk."

Sephiroth looked at his fellow commanders - Genesis smiling gleefully and Angeal with a hand on the Buster Sword - and hoped they couldn't hear the conversation. He whispered back, "They already saw you. There's no point in trying to hide now."

"But I - I can't let Angeal _see_ me like this. We can hide. And then this will blow over and everyone will forget. It'll be fine."

"No, they…" Sephiroth glanced back over at the other Firsts, dropping his voice a little lower just in case. "They clearly saw me accepting your bribes. Zack -"

"Bribes!" Genesis laughed. Sephiroth clamped his jaw shut, wondering if he could escape through the air vent. "How delightfully scandalous!"

Where Genesis was laughing, Angeal was sneering. He stomped into the room with a bellow that reverberated in Sephiroth's bones. "Sephiroth! How _dare_ you!"

Sephiroth held up his hands. He had no idea if the move would placate Angeal, but it was worth a shot. "There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this."

"You should be thanking him, Angeal." Genesis said from the door. "He's training the puppy for the rest of us."

"I never expected this from you! How dare you abuse your position like this? Trading _favors_?! With Zack!" Angeal's snarl looked like it could pierce a behemoth's jugular. "Do you even know how old Zack is? He's my _student_ Sephiroth. Does that mean nothing to you?"

Sephiroth had no idea what either of those things had to do with this situation. Though, now that Angeal mentioned it, Sephiroth _had_ read that young men were often impulsive to the point of irresponsibility. Logically that meant… he should have been thinking about it from the beginning? "Maybe?"

"That's probably exactly why it's happening you know." Genesis interjected. "Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. Or, maybe the dumbest ones do. Never quite sure about that one."

With a growl, Angeal slammed his hands on the desk. Papers flew everywhere. Zack scuttled out and latched onto Sephiroth as the desk rattled.

"I'm sorry! I just needed to do laundry!" Zack wailed.

"That's no excuse for Sephiroth to take advantage of you!" Angeal loomed over the desk. He ignored Zack's head where it poked up from between Sephiroth's legs. There was a rage behind Angeal's eyes - one that heralded a battle. A very unpleasant one.

Meanwhile, Genesis was laughing. "All this. For - for _laundry_? Oh, Goddess. This is too much."

"Angeal..." Sephiroth tried again. Despite Angeal glaring right at him, Sephiroth couldn't help but feel his friend was looking through him. Negotiation skills had never been his forte, but even Sephiroth could tell when talking would only increase his chances of being beheaded. Perhaps it was best to let Zack handle this.

Zack sobbed into leather. "I promise I'll never forge his signature again! Promise!"

Angeal stopped, his scowl melting from it's murderous intensity. "What?" It dissolved into a look of horror. "What?!"

Genesis had tears in his eyes, "You - haha - Goddess! You had Zack Fair in your lap. _Naked_. To do paperwork?!" The way Genesis said it sounded like it was the most ridiculous thing he could fathom. "I can't believe you Sephiroth."

"Hey!" Zack shouted back. "I'm in my underwear! That's not naked!"

Sephiroth kept his hands in the air, hoping that Angeal would listen to reason now that he had calmed. From what, it was unclear. "He was just signing them, no reading was involved."

Angeal looked flabbergasted. "Forgery? Really, Sephiroth?" Jaw set, Angeal took a long and slow breath. Then he settled into that look, that look he got when he was debating how to terrorize some troublemaking SOLDIER. At least it was better that the prospect of dueling him to the death. Sephiroth relaxed minimally.

"Then why was he _sitting_ on you, most incorruptible Silver General? You don't need to share a chair to forge a signature, you know." Genesis managed it without laughing, though there was a wheeze in his voice.

Sephiroth shrugged. "We both like the chair."

Standing straight, Angeal crossed his arms and looked down at Sephiroth and Zack. He gave them a scowl full of reproach. Definitely not about to attempt murder, then. "I'm disappointed in the both of you. Latrine duty for the next month."

Sephiroth had never had latrine duty before but he had heard it was vile.

Zack poked Sephiroth's side and whispered up, "Isn't that a military police job?"

Angeal narrowed his eyes. "And after that you can oversee SOLDIER hopeful training for the next six months." Another miserable job; one that Sephiroth shoved onto Angeal as often as he could.

Zack poked again, following with, "Isn't that a sergeant's job?"

Angeal took a slow breath. "And then you can handle executive detail indefinitely." By far one of Sephiroth's least favorite missions - he didn't actually _want_ to help Heidegger wipe his ass.

Zack poked. "Isn't that a Turk-"

Sephiroth smacked the finger away. "Stop it, Zack." He hissed. Sephiroth didn't want to know where Angeal would escalate to from here, but he didn't want to provoke further.

Raising a brow, but hearing nothing else, Angeal nodded. "And we'll see after that."

Sephiroth didn't groan, but Zack did. It was a groan loud enough and long enough for the both of them. Chained to the tower indefinitely, stuck in this office forever… at least he would be suffering with Zack.

"Oh and Zack." Angeal continued lightly. "Your access privileges to Sephiroth's office are revoked."

Sephiroth knew he was making a pitiful sound, one just as pathetic as Zack's, but he couldn't stop. The coming months were going to be filled with tedium, routine, and boredom. Zack's shenanigans would be cut from Sephiroth's life indefinitely, and that was something he wasn't okay with. Hopefully Angeal would forgive them sooner.

Was tomorrow too soon to suggest doing Angeal's paperwork? It couldn't hurt Sephiroth to try.

A/N: Ah, what's better than Sephiroth and Zack acting like shits and getting scolded like brats by Angeal? Absolutely nothing. Except for re-inventing the good old fashioned Zack and Sephiroth paperwork shit-show with Angeal and Gen. Totes my jam.


End file.
